Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2014
288 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
Smart, clear-eyed, and irreverent, Unspeakable Things is a fresh look at gender and power in the twenty-first century, which asks difficult questions about dissent and desire, money and masculinity, sexual violence, menial work, mental health, queer politics, and the Internet.
Celebrated journalist and activist Laurie Penny draws on a broad history of feminist thought and her own experience in radical subcultures in America and Britain to take on cultural phenomena from the Occupy movement to online dating, give her unique spin on economic justice and freedom of speech, and provide candid personal insight to rally the defensive against eating disorders, sexual assault, and internet trolls. Unspeakable Things is a book that is eye-opening not only in the critique it provides, but also in the revolutionary alternatives it imagines.
"Starred Review. Penny has given us a feminist book for our time that burns with a wild light and deserves attention" - Publishers Weekly
'A British columnist and gender activist's gutsy analysis of how neoliberal capitalism has taken the 'ideals of freedom' and transformed them into 'strategies of social [and sexual] control'...Spirited, intellectually sexy reading. - Kirkus
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Laurie Penny is a columnist and contributing editor at the New Statesman and editor at large at the New Inquiry, and has written for the Guardian, Salon, the Nation, and others. Her blog, Penny Red, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2010, and she won the 2012 British Media Award for Twitter Public Personality of the Year; she has 84,000 followers. She is also the author of two previous books, Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism and the collection Penny Red. Laurie lives in London.
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